Higgs boson discovery topic of lecture event

The recent discovery of a new particle thought to be the long-sought Higgs boson has been hailed as one of the greatest scientific achievements in history. See what it's all about on Oct. 25 at The Citadel.

Simulated Higgs event at the Large Hadron Collider, with decay to two photons (green tracks).

Valerie Halyo of Princeton University, a member of one of the CERN experimental collaborations, and Scott Yost, a particle theorist at The Citadel, will explain the significance of the Higgs boson and describe the efforts leading to its discovery at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, the world's most advanced science facility and highest-energy particle collider.

Last summer, CERN, a large high-energy physics lab in Geneva, Switzerland, announced the discovery of a new particle thought to be the Higgs boson that was predicted in the 1960s and is essential to the consistency of our current theories about particle physics. The Higgs boson is a key ingredient in the standard model of elementary particle physics and is responsible for the origin of the masses of other elementary particles, such as electrons and quarks.

Halyo's talk will describe the experiments at CERN and explain how the discovery was made. Yost will explain why the Higgs boson was introduced into particle theory.

The discovery was announced on July 4 at CERN and the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Melbourne, Australia.

The lecture event is free and open to the public. It begins with a 6 p.m. reception in room 204 of Grimsley Hall. The lecture begins at 6:30 p.m. in Room 117 Grimsley Hall. The event is sponsored by The Citadel Physics Department, the School of Science and Mathematics, and the Daniel Library.

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